First new details from E3 2007! Updated with more info about Mario's new transformations!
Nintendo didn't show a lot of footage from the new Mario game at their E3 press conference, but what they did show proved that Super Mario Galaxy is definitely one of Nintendo's biggest games of the year. It's coming to North America on November 12th, in fact.
Watch the new gameplay trailer:
The trailer shown today is similar to the playable demo at last year's E3 -- Mario is running and jumping around small planets, each with its own gravity. He also spends a good deal of time flying among these planets on apparently predetermined paths. However, we now know that Mario will also be doing a different kind of flying. His new bumblebee suit allows him to hover and fly around the levels, and the video shows him hanging around very large flowers, so there may be a pollination aspect to the suit as well. Mario puts on the bee suit when he collects a certain item that appears to be a large, brown-and-yellow striped mushroom. The gameplay footage shows that Bee Mario can fly for a few seconds at a time, and once he lands, his flying meter quickly recharges. He can also climb around on giant honeycombs. Another section of the video very briefly shows Mario collecting a similar item to turn him into a Boo ghost, at which point he begins floating towards the camera. With two transformations already being shown, you can bet there are probably a few others in the game that we haven't seen yet.
At the press conference, Nintendo stressed that casual players should be able to play this game. Exactly how they are enabling that is still somewhat a mystery, though the automatic camera is sure to help. The press materials also mention an odd cooperative two-player mode, in which you can have a friend use a separate Wii Remote to help manipulate objects on the screen, much like the main player uses the pointer function to activate items and stun enemies.
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Mario Galaxy
Super Mario Galaxy
